Re: solutions? slavery and capitalism

is the point really whether capitalism lasts for another decade or another millenium or for 5,000 years, like the pharaohs in egypt? or is the point that we need to be able to think critically about any and all economic systems, not just become blind followers and workers, saying that we can't do anything about the system so lets just go along with it? if we are critical thinkers, then maybe we can at least create our own spaces where there is less oppression and by example this might help bring change to the wider world faster. maybe, although we should be patient when it comes to waiting for change. it can come very slowly or suddenly. noone expected the monopoly capitalism and totalitarian politics of the eastern bloc and the soviet union to collapse but it did.

: That's a really good question, Biiftu. Slavery did not end because people like Dr. Hadley in A Respectable Trade were opposed to it. It ended because of a war started by the foolish slave masters in the South. I don't know how capitalism will end. Maybe it will just change from within. Maybe one of these days workers will have enough power to force a change in laws so that workers must have a majority of the seats on the board of directors. I guess if people don't just say passively that capitlism is fine and don't try to change anything then there is a chance that changes will happen gradually and capitalism would just fade away. Or maybe it will happen because of some huge disaster and as long as people know there are alternatives maybe they will choose a positive one instead of something bad like the kind of capitalism under Hitler. I guess I've convinced myself that Dr. Hadley really was important because if nothing else he taught people there was something wrong with slavery and maybe that helped people to change the laws eventually and end slavery in Britain. And maybe because of slavery ending in Britain the slave masters of the South freaked out and started the Civil War and that ended slavery in the United States, too.

: : Though Marx presents all the problems a capitalist society would create he does not present the solutions. What if we as a society came to the conclution that Marx was right and we should switch our ecomomic system, how would one start????